**** 5012_ASS 3 # DRAFT 1 # Digital Marketing Plan # MBA # FLEXPAH CAPELLA

Capella University

08/27/2020

MSH Brand’s Digital marketing plan for its Doggy Treats Product

The Doggy Treat Product

Doggy Treats is a premium animal feeds that gets to ensure better health for all dogs that get to consume this meal. The dog-owners will become satisfied as their dogs become more energetic and have improved health. This will make them become loyal customers as they wish to maintain a healthy lifestyle for their dogs. The dog-owners will also enjoy providing the meals to the dogs, and they will purchase more of the meal and rear more dogs as they are assured of a better meal.

MSH Brand uses comparative positioning in placing Doggy Treats feeds in the market. Comparative positioning works by placing products next to other brands to highlight the competitive edge. The product will be positioned based on value as it has a bone meal and ground whole corn as its major ingredients. Doggy Treats ingredients are of high quality, which makes the product be positioned in terms of the value it brings to the dogs.

MSH Brand incorporates a value-based pricing plan in setting the price of its product. This plan is based on what the customer believes that Doggy Treats dog feed is worth. One of the advantages of a value-based pricing method is that the customer gets to pay what the result is worth to them. This is because the natural meal is unique from all other feeds as its nutrients are organic and allow the dogs to become stronger. Military Dogs consume this feeds, and the customers believe that their dogs can be as strong as those in the military. Vet nary doctors who specialize in dog treatment have recommended this meal to ill dogs and growing puppies as it improves their immune system.

Doggy Treats packaging is unique, branded, functional, safe, and easy. The product packaging of Doggy Treats is one that stands out from other competitive products. Its packaging method allows the consumer to understand the essence of a proper dog diet. The packaging is simple and easy to carry for the dog-owners. Once the seal has been broken, the meal is only valid for four days, which means that the owner can calculate the amount of dog food he/she can buy for a month.

In an attempt to make its new product known, the company has incorporated a customer referral incentive program. To further the newly released brand, the MSH brand has to adopt digital marketing with special emphasis being placed on social media marketing. Social media websites such as Facebook and Google+ offer organizations a platform to promote their products and services in a more relaxed environment. Social networks connect with a world of potential customers that can view the organization from a different perspective (Cameron et al. 2016). Through the social media platform, MSH Brand will get to promote its new product, Doggy Treats.

Situation Analysis

The majority of Pet Food companies are using online platforms to market their products. Brands such as Nestle’s Purina petcare have an active Facebook presence. The brand shares all its pet products and highlights how the products are good for pets. On the other hand, Mars petcare utilizes its official website to market its products (Mars.com, 2020). The brand regularly runs ads on its website as well as promotional events. Considering that there is a growing trend of millennials and xennials to own pets and that the identified populations love shopping online, the online presence of the above-mentioned companies has been an asset to the companies. The companies have been able to sell their products online as well as market them to get bigger large brand followers.

Other pet food brands such as Hill’s pet nutrition and J. M Smucker have adopted the use of social media platforms to market their products. Hill’s pet nutrition runs youtube ads aimed at creating its brand awareness (Feng & Mueller, 2019). On the other hand, J.M Smucker uses Instagram to capture the huge millennial following of pets and their foods.

There are three marketing objectives and goals for MSH Brand. The first objective is to increase the company’s sales volume. By adopting an effective digital marketing plan, the company can increase its sales volume and its profit compared to last year. Through the digital marketing plan, the company can double its sales revenue in the next two years. This will happen if the company sells more of its products and if it acquires new customers.

The second objective is to increase the company’s market share in the pet food industry. The digital marketing plan plans to increase the company’s market share by 5% in the next two years with the intention of the company owning at least 20% of the global pet food industry in the next twenty years.

The last marketing objective is to increase MSH Brand’s global presence. The objective is geared at improving the company’s brand awareness. There are four main global pet food markets; North America, LAMEA, Asia Pacific, and Europe. The company struggles in the LEMEA and the Asia Pacific markets due to competition from local pet food manufacturers. Through the proposed digital marketing plan, MSH Brand will grow its presence in LEMEA by primarily targeting Africa. The objective is to make MSH Brand more known in Africa than it is currently in the next two years. The proposed plan plans to double the sales that the company makes in the African continent.

To grow its online presence, there are five main types of digital platforms that the company can incorporate. The first is leveraging its official website. The MHS website receives massive traffic and, for that reason, can be used to market the company’s new pet food product.

The second type of digital platform is the social media platform. Social media has become widely accepted not only in the United States but all over the world. The most common social media platforms are youtube, Instagram, Facebook Pinterest, TikTok, and twitter (De Veirman et al., 2020). The company can use its social media platforms to target different customers considering that the other platforms appeal to diverse populations.

The third type of digital platform that the company can leverage is search engine optimization. According to Vangelov (2020), by paying search engine companies to have their company appearing among the top ten brands that pop up when pet foods are searched, the company will have done an excellent job in marketing not only its new product but in marketing its brand. The fourth is display adverting.

The last type of digital platform that the company can leverage is endorsements. The company can have celebrities endorse their product online. For example, the company can have Stephen Curry, the National Basketball Association player, and Katy Perry, the famous musician, support their new product. By doing so, the company will build a massive brand following with a high possibility of making more sales.

The proposed marketing plan for MSH Brand will primarily focus on three main variables. The first variable is the product. The program will focus on selling MSH Brand products as the best dog food product in the world. Besides, the plan will aim at ensuring that the entire product that the company sells is widely known not only in the US but all over the world.

The second variable is the price. One of the weaknesses of MSH Brand is that its products are more expensive compared to other brands in its industry. The proposed plan proposes reducing the price of the company’s products by 10% as well as letting the customers know of the price reduction. By lowering the cost and making sure that the product is well known, the company can increase the number of pieces it sells. In the long run, the company will find it beneficial.

The third variable is the place or the distribution variable. As it stands, MSH Brand products are mainly in North America and Europe. The proposed plan proposes the company marketing its products all over the world, even in countries that are deemed hostile to American made products such as in Arab nations. By marketing and selling its products all over the world online, the company will increase its brand awareness and consequentially increase its sales volume.

The plan proposes the use of 5 digital-marketing channels. The first channel that will be used is content marketing. The marketing team will primarily focus on the use of videos as they are most appealing to the current generation. The company will come up with videos that highlight the benefits of the new product. The videos will be shared on the company’s website. The second channel is social media marketing. The plan proposes that the company uses YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter promotions to make the company and its products more known. Particular emphasis is placed on Facebook promotion, considering that Facebook has over 2.5 billion active accounts. The company can have its work promoted to 10% of the active Facebook accounts that are owned by individuals who are 25 years and above.

The third channel that the company can use is email marketing. The company receives thousands of emails everyday inquiring about their products. The company can use the email addresses that contact them to promote their products further. The company can as well collect the email addresses of individuals that support MSH Brand or that are willing to purchase MSH Brand products by visiting malls. The company can use the collected email addresses to launch a successful email marketing campaign geared at making more people aware of the brand and its new product.

The fourth and fifth channels that the company can use are the search engine optimization (SE) channel and display advertising. In SEO, the company can pay to have their sites appear when searches are done about dog food all over the world. This will help in the promotion of the company and its new product. In-display advertising, the company can pay to have their new product advertised on websites with high traffic through Google Ads. The company can advertise on sites such as YouTube, trip advisor, fandom, and Pinterest, considering that they are in the top ten places with high traffic (Hardwick, 2020).

In measuring the effectiveness of the digital marketing plan, four main metrics will be used. The first metric is the overall website traffic. The first metric will be used to determine whether there has been an increase in the company’s official website as a result of the adopted digital marketing plan. A significant increase of more than a thousand visitors to the website will signify the effectiveness of the digital marketing plan. On the other hand, a decline or low visitor visit will indicate a failure of the digital marketing plan.

The second metric that will be used is a traffic by source. Considering that the company will have links running to its official website from the different social media platforms that it runs, the company will be able to know which platform generates the most significant number of visitors. Consequentially, the organization will know its best social media platform.

The third metric that will be used is the analysis of new visitors vs. returning visitors. The metric will make it possible for the organization to know how many unique visitors have visited the company’s websites after the digital marketing plan was implemented. By doing so, it will be possible for the company to determine how effective the program is or not.

The fourth metric that will be used is the impression metric. The impression metric captures the response of site visitors by analyzing comments, likes, and reposts of the company’s activities, campaigns (Shen, Lever & Joppe, 2020). A high impression metric will signify the effectiveness of the digital marketing plan, whereas a low impression metric will signify the failure of the digital marketing plan.

References

Cameron, A. J., Charlton, E., Ngan, W. W., & Sacks, G. (2016). A systematic review of the effectiveness of supermarket-based interventions involving product, promotion, or place on the healthiness of consumer purchases. Current Nutrition Reports, 5(3), 129-138.

De Veirman, M., De Jans, S., Van den Abeele, E., & Hudders, L. (2020). Unraveling the power of social media influencers: a qualitative study on teenage influencers as commercial content creators on social media. The regulation of social media influencers. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Feng, Y., & Mueller, B. (2019). The state of augmented reality advertising around the globe: a multi-cultural content analysis. Journal of Promotion Management, 25(4), 453-475. Retrieved from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2019-0281/full/html